Treacy's dissertation studies Algerian novels in French that respond to the political and social landscape of the post-independence period. Through their literary form, engagement with the political present, and utopian thinking, these works imagine counter-realities that interrupt the closed-circuit loop of violence and paralysis that have defined public life in Algeria in the aftermath of independence from France in 1962.

Building on the recent work of critics who combine materialist dialectics and post-colonial critique, He will show how these texts disrupt this permanence of aftermath through particular aesthetic moves, suggesting new ways of reading post-colonial literature beyond the polarities of politics and poetics.

If you are interested in participating in the workshop please contact Shannon Golden at golde118@umn.edu.